10th April: GS Update

Ok so I didnt make a gamerscore update last weekend, mainly because I was too busy. Busy with making extra posts, game guides and watching Zero Punctuation. Deal with it =D . Coupled with this, I'm doing a '2 for 3' deal on updates - 2 in 3 weeks, because I'm away this weekend. Away is as far as I wont update, but still near to a 360 enough to keep my streak on 360 voice going.

Having a new gamer picture is like eating out at a new restaurant... you go in and everything is different and... ok that really makes no sense... bad comparison... never mind. In gaming related news... borandi seemed really excited to play yesterday. Our current gamerscore is 85,191 . That is a boost of 60 points over last time! He played Thrillville: OTR, PAC-MAN winning 1 achievement, Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero II, Brain Challenge™, DOOM, and then borandi developed a funny twitch and went to try and sleep it off or something. Crazy humans...

Good thing borandi and I got some play time in! Every day we play is another opportunity to pull away from Donny NL and that 40,257 gamerscore!

Hey, I almost forgot! The gamerscore challenge that borandi is competing in is on day 2 and we're doing our best to win this thing. Check out the progress right now! 12 other competitors are racking up achievements and powering up their gamerscores, hoping to secure a victory! Currently borandi is hanging on to the number 6 spot. We've only got one day left. Let's cancel everything on our schedule from school to work to sleep (haven't been following what borandi does these days) and win this challenge!

This week/update brings up several long time completions, and a new game completion. Along with that, I've lots of hand cramp from Guitar Hero and no achievements to show for it. Almost had one, and also trawling through expert on GH2, even 5*ing a few. I also found this site for GH3, giving some of my more spectacular achievements:

Now for the games:

NHL 2K7 650 -> 700 of 1000 13 of 17 Achievements I'm having another crack at this game. Technically I don't have much left - Win 100 games, play 30 online games, quit 10 online games, and the (gliched so no-one can get it) score a penalty on the hardest difficulty setting. I got the 'Win with every team' achievement though. As I'm writing, I'm going after the 100 wins, and later tonight MR WHIPPY 10K and I will be doing the online achievements.
Brain Challenge™ 50 -> 70 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements Not a lot on Brain Challenge - mingo21 and I did the '10 online wins in a row' achievement for 20GS. I'm at 37% brain usage, so almost at 40 for that achievement.
PAC-MAN 130 -> 170 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements Pac-man can go to hell! Haha well the last achievement is bugging me, and according to people online on forums, it's bugging them as well. It involves eating every ghost 4 times in the same level. Now there are online videos for this, but since then I believe Namco have put in a random element so the ghosts don't always follow the same path. I tried for 2 hrs last night for the final achievement, and didnt get it. So I might just have to leave this one. On the otherhand, I got the level 21 achievement.
Thrillville: OTR 130 -> 945 of 1000 48 of 50 Achievements Well I finally sent this rental back, 55GS short. Most of the achievements were easy, just required some grinding. I was lucky on the sideshow achievement, with the 'splat-a-mole' game giving me 5* after 3 tries (some people on forums had 50 odd tries before getting it). The two achs I have left are the ultra hard one (Beat Event Horizon 2 on hard) and beat every arcade game. I did manage to get the 'top 10 in the world' achievement, by building the shortest track on one of the racing games, and finishing a race in under 17.4 seconds. That's a sneaky achievement!
Army of Two™ 65 -> 80 of 1000 4 of 37 Achievements Not much to report on Army of Two. I started the main game a little, healed my partner. This does look somewhat like a fun game, but I reckon it's better in co-op and might wait to play it then.
Mr. DRILLER Online 0 -> 90 of 200 6 of 12 Achievements I bought Mr. Driller. It's very fun, in an N+/Geometry Wars style of 'breaking the controller'. The concept is simple - dig down, don't let stuff fall on you, don't run out of air. Yet it's tricky - you'll have to drill around some blocks, then maneuver so that more blocks dont fall on you. Then you have to drill sideways to reach the air pickups. It's fun, and frustrating. Online is poor - the host having the advantage. I managed to get one online achievement, but most people quit as they can't do anything, and that doesn't count as a win.
A-Train HX 640 -> 1000 of 1000 24 of 24 Achievements YaY I completed A-Train! I did my guide for 640GS (which I will post here soon), and then between several of us at x360a.org, we managed to figure out the rest. I then did some videos for my guide. A fairly easy 1000 in the end - there's only one or two real tricky achievements, but once you understand the way the game works, it's relatively simple. Game Complete!
Forza Motorsport 2 970 -> 1000 of 1000 44 of 44 Achievements The last achievement I needed was the 'One Million Online Credits', which was fairly easy - just kept playing the Nissan Speedway with my Ford GT40 (or TVR Speed 12 or Mercedes SLK-GTR, depending on what was allowed). I managed the final 126k in a night, totalled about 10hrs online (which did include some boosting). A very heartwarming 1000GS. Game Complete!
Undertow 165 -> 200 of 200 12 of 12 Achievements Likewise with Undertow - just needed to grind out those 10k kills. 80 kills in 2 mins with the first map, I just did 1500/2000 a night to get it. Game Complete!
Catan 110 -> 120 of 200 8 of 12 Achievements I haven't had an achievement on Catan for ages, however I was lucky to invite in mingo21 into a game for 10GS. Mingo has all but one ach on Catan, the one he is missing is the '1000pts in online play', despite having won almost 200 games now. Some people have that ach, so we is thinking that it's just being a bit glitchy.
Winning Eleven 2007 240 -> 280 of 1000 7 of 23 Achievements Like I said before, this game is essentially Pro Evo 6, but renamed for the US. I won one of the longer cups since the last update, a nice 40GS. I'll soon start on the leagues. ===================

GamerScore:	83701 -> 85191
Zone:	Pro

Completed XBLA:	18 -> 19 / 52
Completed Retail:	38 -> 40 / 192
GS Completion %:	41.13% -> 41.80%

Country Rank:	104 -> 102
World Rank:	707 -> 701
Completion Rank:	1,773 -> 1,691

25th August: GS Update

Blue Dragon	0 -> 10 of 1000 2 of 43 Achievements
Chromehounds	0 -> 120 of 1000 5 of 49 Achievements
Bomberman LIVE	0 -> 30 of 200 3 of 12 Achievements
X-Men:TheOfficialGame	685 -> 1000 of 1000 16 of 16 Achievements
Track and Field	0 -> 170 of 200 11 of 12 Achievements
Cabela's Safari	350 of 1000 13 of 30 Achievements
Catan	110 of 200 7 of 12 Achievements
FC Instincts Predator	0 -> 280 of 1000 13 of 35 Achievements
Outpost Kaloki X	10 of 200 1 of 12 Achievements
Bejeweled 2	30 of 200 2 of 12 Achievements
Quake 4	0 -> 35 of 1000 3 of 50 Achievements

Five days worth of gaming, and the best bit has been Blue Dragon! Cheapest online price is 30GBP, but I got mine from Blockbuster (32GBP) as it's just round the corner :) I can safely say that Blue Dragon is the best game out on the 360! Forget your GoW rubbish, or Bioshock nonsense - any hardcore RPG fan will LOVE Blue Dragon. I'm seven hours in, and you can already feel the Dragonball Z/Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy influences. For those that don't know, the main artist on BD did DBZ/DQ, and Nobuo Uoematsu did the music for BD and FF. But all the RPG elements are in BD - experience, battles, storyline, FMV. Okay I admit, maybe it's missing one element - the stereotypical double D cup breasted female... But if you've been waiting for a JRPG for the 360, this is it. The achievements aren't too shabby either - in order to get ALL of them you'll probably need either a guide or a couple of runthroughs. I got the easy 2 achieves (Multi-monster, back attack), missed one achievement, but I'm enjoying it nonetheless!

Chromehounds has been on my shelf a while - I got it based on the fact that Tim, the artist at http://cad-comic.com, said he enjoyed it. The best way to describe Chromehounds is to say that it is quite slow paced, mechanised robot fighting ala Battlefield style. I've not done much of the single player, but rican ninja89 plays this a lot with a couple of his mates, so I joined in. Online is very repetitive (doing the same thing over and over again on the different maps) but with some friends it does pass the time. The idea of each map is to beat/destroy the other HOUNDs, or destroy the enemy headquarters. If you win, that area is 'slightly' captured by your force. Everyone online can help towards capturing/defending (i.e. 1000s of people), and keep capturing until your side wins the war. Then the map is reset, and continue. I got some of the achievements out of order thanks to some boosting help, and some of the achievements are almost impossible. But as long as my friends play this game, I will too.

I got some MS points this week, so I bought Bomberman Live. I thought it would be very fun in single player and online... but I was let down. It's basically just more of the same of the demo. There is no single player story mode (which I was looking forward to), and few variations on a theme to play with. My advice is to only get it if you think you'll play the demo online.

I hadn't played X-Men III in a while, mainly because all I had to do was finish up Iceman's achievements. They didnt take long with the help of a guide, so I can finally label this game 'complete' and stick it on the shelf. An easy game overall, bar a couple of Nightcrawler levels.

At last, a decent button bashing game in Track and Field! A mis-spent youth was played with games like this, so I snapped up this XBLA title. I've got all the 'easy' achievements - <9s>65m in all three throws of the Javelin, etc.. The final achievement to get is the 'Qualify with every attempt' achievement - the Hammer throw is the one pulling me down on this achievement, but I'll keep plugging at it.

I've had to start a new game on Cabela's African (the other time I played it was on a different HDD), but I got through the first country no probs in record speed. Managed to get that Dik-dik in one shot, first time - the sneaky little bastard!

I played my first online game of Catan - two people quit early, and I came last anyway with 4 points. That game lasted a long, long time! There's only one person on my friends list who plays it seriously - he's just got the 500 points online achieve, and played it 300 times online. *zzzz*

FarCry Instincts Predator seems like an interesting game - but I haven't played single player. rican and I just traded some easy achievements with the help of an online guide. Spent about 5 hours on this to get 280GS.

I haven't played Outpost Kaloki X for a long time, mainly because there were two ways to play the game - the right way (which happens 1% of the time); and the wrong way (the other 99%). Basically you either win, or fail. There are some very decent guides online that people can follow, but I spent a lot of time pausing the game to read the guide in the couple of levels I did.

I've been playing my Nintendo DS a lot this month - mainly Puzzle Quest (a game coming to XBLA soon) which is basically a Bejeweled RPG. So I thought I'd be a bit better at Bejeweled. WRONG! I got worse... enough so much that I could have laughed milk out of my nose. The achievements are HARD...

Quake 4 is a game I've played on the PC once or twice... so I opened up my 360 copy and joined rican online. It's an ok game, but not enough people play it online. Those that do are intent on not letting people get the top 10/top 1 achievements - often by using glitches to do so. There is always talk of a scoreboard reset, but no-one ever knows when. Single player is fun, if just a bit too dark.

GS: 43,249 -> 44,254

Completed XBLA:	9 / 25
Completed Retail:	21 / 96
GS Completion %:	41.30%
GS % (Non-Demo):	44.56%

Country Rank:	1136/837441
World Rank:	1977/1519859

27th May: GS Update (1)

Well it's definately time for a GS update. Thankfully I've finished all my exams for this academic year, thus I can devote some time to 360 gaming =D In the past week, I've rented a few games and got pissed off at a few others.

American Wasteland (of the Tony Hawk fame) is my first attempt at playing a skateboarding game in quite a while. I've completed a few during the genre, so I looked forward to playing this. Sure enough, it's still classic Hawk. Lots of grinding, manual-ing and grabbing galore. There are two main modes - Story and Classic. Classic involves 6 retro skate parks, with 10 goals each (score, collect secret tape, collect letters, etc.). Story takes you through the new storyline - help build a new skatepark after coming to LA from HickVille. Sometimes the story line isnt clear, but its good Hawk and worth playing if you like the series. The achievements seem alright too - Every 10 goals in classic, playing each level online, getting a score above 1000 on each map in free skate, story mode, everything 100%. I've still a few maps to get and story mode to do, but 100% seems a bit of a bitch - you have to do every special gap and trick in the game. Blegh. But I'll enjoy this the longer I play it hopefully!

Full Auto again - I tried for some online acheives, but the people online were being assholes, purposely driving behind to get the kills. On one race, it was Class C restricted, but this guy got 70 seconds ahead in one lap. WTF??? Well I also did a section on single player, so still a lot to go, but it's fun.

Played the demo of Centipede and Millipede. It's classic retro. I didnt like it then, I'm still not keen on it now. If this game was 200MS points, then maybe.


Saw a few people on my list had Heavy Weapon, so I played the demo. It's quite fun - your standard 2D sidescrolling shoot and kill sort of game. Plenty of levels to choose from. This would be better if they'd made points = money to buy upgrades, rather than 1 upgrade per level. I'd get this from XBLA if I had some spare MS points, but I'm saving up for Undertow.

Small Arms is a 2D style fighting game along the same lines as Super Smash Brothers, but with guns. To be completely honest, even from the demo, they overcomplicated the controls. I'm not going to be getting this with my points.

I booted up FM2006 to see what else I could do. During playing, I got a message from someone random to try and get some online achievements. Did a few of those, and he told me that he got his ~500GS from the game was to basically take control of as many teams possible in a one division game, then leave it on overnight. I did so, but forgot to disable the option for the xbox auto shutting down after 6hrs. But I got a fair chunk of achievements during that time =D Need to do it a bit more for a few more GS.

Still on the quest for Catan achievements. I've done another 5/6 games getting the largest army card, so only a few more for that. Then it's a case of about 100 wins online (or 1000 points worth). Given that a full game can last 40 mins, that achievement is a long time away!

I tried demos of the new XBLA games Xevious and Rush'n Attack. Wasn't impressed, even for retro games. I've never heard of these games before, and they didnt want me to buy them. Come on MS, where's Undertow?

Tried some more single player CoD3. The controls are still giving me grief.



Another batch of Pro Evo. I'm now about 26 games into my Premiership Season - another 12 or so to go until I finish that achievement.